We on the Left are not going to get all that we want from either the House or the Senate Health Care Bill, or even a bill that amalgamates the very best features of both bills. We are still going to have some fifteen million Americans who will not have coverage when all is said and done, and it is taking far too long--in my opinion--for the provisions of the bill to go into effect.
There are, for myself at least, only two absolute deal breakers: a mandate without a public option in one form or another, and taxing the unions' "Cadillac" health care plans. The majority of the American still support health care if it has a strong public option to keep the insurance companies honest. I believe that the mandate without a public option, as well as the tax on "Cadillac" health care plans, is nothing more than a further attempt to break the unions, and finish burying America's middle class. I also believe that a 5% surtax on those making more than $200,000 per year if they are single, $300,000 if they are married and filing jointly, is much fairer than taxing some poor union guy who's making $60,000 a year with overtime. That health insurance benefit has been the only real pay increase he has seen over the last decade, when you consider inflation.
Once this particular bill passes, we on the Left have to accept that it is just the start of our mission: whether we are center-left Truman Democrats, left of center FDR Liberals, social democrat Progressives like Henry Wallace and Bob LaFollette, or Democratic Socialists like Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas. We must work together for our ultimate goal: to see that every American is covered by a system of affordable, comprehensive, universal health care.
That is not the only goal for which we should be striving. We on the Left need to help bring Wall Street and the financial sector to heel, by reinstituting an improved Glass-Steagall Act, together with all of the other regulatory protections that the American people have lost over the last thirty years. We must remind our fellow Americans that deregulation has led directly to the savings and loan debacle, the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, Enron, WorldCom, Bernie Madoff, and the necessity of bailing out AIG, Wells-Fargo, and all of the rest. My guess is that the cost of these preventable catastrophes, including the more than $3,000,000,000,000 the Pentagon cannot account for, represents some seventy to eighty percent of our National Debt, once you include interest.
I have read the United States Constitution carefully: in spite of what Milton Freeman, Alan Greenspan, and so many others think, there is no constitutional guarantee of making unlimited profits on financial instruments. Nor is there any guarantee that they will be able to keep the greater portion of those earnings. It is up to those of us on the Left, by speaking to our fellow citizens and pressuring our Representatives and Senators, to see that these protections--so necessary for the consumer and smaller businesses against the financial sharks of fraud, merger, and acquisition--are reinstated to protect the People and the Nation.
I think that we should also revamp our entire tax system. Our nation was doing better--and our national debt was at one twelfth its current level--when the rich were paying their fair share. Yeah, they're still paying much of the personal income tax (see "The Forty Percent Solution," OpEdNews.com, January 18, 2009), but much of the actual tax burden has shifted to the middle class through payroll taxes, use taxes (such as gasoline), and the like. For business, the tax burden has shifted to the small business owner, as large corporations have seen their share of the Federal tax burden drop from 35% under Eisenhower to about 9% today.
We on the Left also need to push hard to see that the Congress creates some form of differentiation in the system of capital gains taxes; between capital gains resulting from direct investment in one's business, and those resulting from the transactions of paper financial instruments, such as stocks and derivatives. The later should be taxed at a much higher rate than the former. I also believe that in this era of computing super power, the time has come for the government to begin taxing stock and related transactions. Not bonds however: they should remain a safer and less costly investment, in order to promote the rebuilding of our nation's infrastructure.
Finally, We on the Left need to see that the financial sharks of fraud, merger, and acquisition are neutered by strengthening and once again enforcing the Sherman Antitrust Act and all of its related legislation. Our government has, over the last thirty years, permitted corporations in too many sectors of our economy to become so large that they cannot be permitted to fail. No business enterprise can be so predominant economically without corrupting the system that allowed it to come into existence.
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